


Exposure

by ShinyKipp



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Anal Sex, And lots of love, Canon Trans Character, F/M, Oral Sex, Post-Canon, Sensory Deprivation, exploring vulnerability, that's an important part, using kink to develop healthy coping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-05-04 14:53:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14595432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinyKipp/pseuds/ShinyKipp
Summary: “Barry,” she interrupts with a smile. “We’ve talked about this! It’s over. Done. I’m not in an umbrella anymore.” Frustration curls through her, but she quiets it with a sip of her tea. “It’s been months, you’ve gotta let this go!”Lup gets it, really, she knows that Barry changed over the years, but they don’t need to keep rehashing those issues. Better for them both to just move on and enjoy what they have.Relics gone, umbrella destroyed, case closed.((or: Somewhere past the point of inevitability is the point of resolution.))





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! This fic is my first voyage into multichaptered fic in quite a while.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

The light reflects twilight-orange through their windows off of the late-season snow, and Lup watches the day fade through half-shuttered blinds. She and Barry spent most of the day working, so she welcomes the reprieve as he attends to the whistling tea kettle on their stove.

“You know?” Barry breaks the comfortable silence that follows the steeping of their tea as he pulls the herbal sachets from their drinks, and Lup’s eyes snap over to him. Barry places the bags in a little dish. “I’ve been afraid of the dark for as long as I can remember.” 

Lup rolls her eyes and slouches back into her chair. This is the third time Barry’s brought his fear up since they moved into the house about six months ago. It wasn’t any more relevant now than it was for the last hundred years, Lup thought, but Barry disagrees. “Yeah?” she indulges him anyway. 

“Yeah.” He slides a cup over to her, and the steam hits her nose with a bright, floral flavor. “I don’t like, uh, not being able to know what’s going on around me.” His tone is level, banal. 

It’s something she knows, of course, but recently Barry’s been confronting her more and more over their feelings on the dark; it’s not her favorite thing, sure, but there’s no need for them to spend so much of their time reunited talking about stuff that happened in the past.

“Hmm,” she hums, a little mock-interested and a little flippant. “That sounds scary.”

Barry swirls some honey into his tea, replaces the pot on the counter, and slides a hand over her shoulder as he moves to the living room. “It is,” he says, and the hand leaves her shoulders as he meanders away. “But that’s okay.”

“I mean, duh,” Lup scoffs and stands, clasping the warm mug and traipsing after him to the cozy den.

He gets to the point. “If you, uh, happened to be afraid, too—”

“Baaaarrry,” she interrupts with a smile. “We’ve talked about this! It’s over. Done. I’m not in an umbrella anymore.” Frustration curls through her, but she quiets it with a sip of her tea. “It’s been  _ months _ , you’ve gotta let this go!” She gets it, really, she knows that Barry changed over the years, but they don’t need to keep rehashing those issues. Better for them both to just move on and enjoy what they have.

Relics gone, umbrella destroyed, case closed.

She almost misses his whisper: “ _ I’ve _ got to let it go?”

Her second flare of annoyance doesn’t get quenched by her drag of tea. “Yeah.” 

Lup knows she’s getting terse, and a little bit of tension hangs between her shoulders as she follows him to the couch where he settles. Barry looks like he has something else to say, but instead he reaches lazily for the latest book in an exhaustive series on the ethics of interrogative necromancy. She sees a nervous furrow between his brows, but he tries to huff out the tension in a long breath.

“I don’t know.” He finally says, arm falling back into his lap before it’s halfway to the book. Lup situates herself next to him on the couch. She grabs their big woolen blanket and throws it over their shoulders. “I don’t know if I believe that you’re as, uh, unfazed as you say you are.”

Lup mocks a wounded noise and leans more heavily against him. “Barry! Such an accusation,” she keens, reaching for a better rebuttal. ‘Unfazed’ may as well be her middle name, she thinks. He should know it, too, after all this time; Barry questions her in the context of their experiments, in the context of their dynamic and their growth, but his questions of her flappability are new.

She doesn’t like it. 

If she could summon an example of her tough and dark-tolerating nature, she could quiet his concern with evidence and they could promptly stop talking about this.

Instead she remembers three nights prior, when she woke up in a cold sweat and had produce flame in her hands before she tore free of whatever torment clung to her from a dream. 

Lup pushes the thought away and replaces it with a plan of action. “I have an idea.” She places her tea on their coffee table, lining it up with an old ring. “I’ll prove to you that it’s really no big deal!” She takes a deep breath and catches Barry’s hands. They’re warm, and she idly runs her thumbs over the scars on his palms from long-ago rituals. “Cast blindness on me, and you’ll see.”

Barry’s brows quirk up, and his mouth twitches into a frown before he opens it with an “I—”

Lup moves closer. “You?”

“I don’t know, Lup.” His concern is absolute, and his voice is quiet. 

She scoffs and leans in with a smile. His hesitation is palpable and infuriating. If he’s going to make a big show about this problem he thinks she has, then he should be much more eager to resolve the issue. “Ba-rry,” she sings again, softer this time. “Come on, it’ll help! I promise.” She pulls on his hands to draw herself closer, and she murmurs her next words against his lips, salacious. “Then things can be more like they used to be. You like what the dark used to mean for us , yeah?”

Lup regrets how weighted the statement sounds. Going for aloof and landing heavily in nostalgic territory isn’t what she intends, but Barry reacts to her words all the same. 

He kisses her softly and lingers for just a moment. The big clock on the wall ticks away the passing seconds. His voice is soft and reminiscent.  “I mean, I did, but—”

“—then what’s the problem here?” She’s tired of him beating around the bush. 

He shuts his mouth. 

_ Good _ , Lup thinks, sitting back on her heels with a smirk. “It’s what I want, Barry, don’t worry.”

That slackens the tension in his shoulders, and he gives her hands a squeeze. “Alright, uh, yeah, I can—I can do that.” He looks up at her, and his obvious worry feels like a knife to her heart. “You’ll… you’ll tell me if you want me to stop, right? Just tell me if you want me to stop.”

The concern softens her, and she murmurs, “Of course, Bear.”

Barry takes a deep breath. The spell doesn’t have a somatic component, but he pulls his hands from hers and reaches up anyway, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.  He takes another breath, and she hears the air sink into his lungs before it comes out invigorated with magic: “Blind.” 

The simple spell falls from his lips and over Lup, and she closes her eyes against the complete darkness. She opens her eyes, and it’s still dark. Lup feels nothing for a few long moments. It’s just dark!  _ No big deal _ , she thinks. A little more shady than usual, that’s all. It’s— It’s—

It’s _ really  _ dark. 

The lingering tightness in her chest from her annoyance lurches into a more potent squeeze, and nausea swirls through her. Lup tries to take a grounding breath, but the air clings to her throat, tacky and stagnant. She sucks down a breath anyway and clenches her hands. It’s an old relaxation trick, bringing her muscles to their most tense and then releasing the energy all at once, but she shivers with the exertion of it.

Her nails bite into her palms; she can  _ feel _ , but her throat is tight and she can’t see, she can’t see, she can’t  _ breathe _ —

A shaky voice yanks her from the slippery slope, “L-Lup, you’re in our—in our living room.” She feels Barry’s fingers soothe over the shell of her ear. They tremble for a moment before stabilizing against her skin. 

His voice tugs her up through the thick air. She still feels smothered by the darkness, but she hovers in her discomfort now. It’s not better, but it’s not worse.

Lup forces another sticky inhale and tries to relax her shoulders. Her next breath comes slightly easier, and she tries to calm her thundering heartbeat. It’s completely dark, she can’t see, but she’s in their living room. 

“You’re in our living room with me,” he pets her hair, soft and repetitive. She focuses on the point of warm contact. He ghosts over her earrings and speaks firmly. “You can hear the clock.” His free hand pulls up their blanket, and the scratchy material covers her shoulders. “You can feel this blanket.” 

His heartbeat thrums. The clock ticks. The blanket is rough against her skin.

“You can feel me.” 

She can. 

Lup takes another slow, shaky breath, knotting a hand in the fabric of his shirt. 

“I—You know, you can talk, Lup,” he reminds her gently. “Tell me how you feel.”

The words she reaches for don’t come at first, but the second, more steady, breath she takes finds the shape of words. “Uh, fine, fine.” She says, and the tension hangs between her shoulder blades as she hovers on the slope of panic.

Barry holds his breath for just a second, and the change in the movement of his chest makes her pause, too. Then he sighs a low, resigned noise and drops his hand from her ear to her back to hug her close. Something about the pressure is immediately grounding, and she feels less like she’s on a downward slide and more like she’s in her husband’s arms. “What else?”

“N-nervous.” Then: “A little. Only a little. It’s just, uh, it’s just a little different, you know?”

It  _ is _ only a little, she tells herself; her heart flutters in her chest, but she feels his hand pressed into her back, feels his sturdy, large body under her cheek, smells the faint scent of his soap, hears the steady metronome of his heart.

It’s Barry, stable and present and  _ real _ . She’s not in the umbrella, she’s home. She’s in the arms of her best friend, safe and warm in their living room, so she takes a clear, deep breath, and relaxes into the moment.

Lup lets her eyes slip shut as her body clears the surge of adrenaline, and she focuses on the darkness. It still feels smothering, so she turns her thoughts to the umbrella then lets them wander. 

The Umbrastaff is her most recent brush with the dark, but in his arms it’s also easy to remember a night where they tumbled into bed together and the spells fell from his lips like snow, blanketing the room in silence and taking her senses away—

It used to mean something else to sit in the darkness, and she feels a flash of frustration at the discomfort still sitting in her gut with a heavy, unwelcome weight. The twist from anticipatory glee to precipitous panic  _ sucks _ , and Lup huffs out a sigh as she shoves her frustration to the side. 

“Okay, yeah, that’s fine.” She gives him a little tap-tap with the words, and he mumbles a word of banishment with a kiss to her forehead.

The deeper-darkness behind her closed eyes lifts, and Lup opens her eyes to see him watching her carefully. The late evening sun catches his concern, illuminating the pitch of his brow in somber blue light. 

Barry continues his gentle backrub, and he shifts, pulling her down with him as he re-situates them on the couch. 

It’s easy to follow his lead and wind up draped over his chest on their sizable couch, and she manages to steal another kiss as he reclines.

It makes him laugh softly, and he pulls her closer, the blanket mussing her hair as he kisses her, playful and light. Eventually, he speaks: “I, uh, I gotta admit, I wasn’t sure about that idea.” She rests her hands on his chest, and she feels the tension easing out of his shoulders as they settle. “I think—I think that was good, though. We should do that again, sometime.”

She hums, ignores the quiet whisper in the back of her mind of ‘ _ I’d rather not, _ ’ and says “Sure!” out loud instead. 

Barry doesn’t notice the forced flippancy if his gentle smile and the quiet way he nearly-whispers “Great.” is anything to go by. 

“Maybe—Maybe next time I can try for a bit longer,” she quips, motivated by his gentleness and her own eagerness to please. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He smiles. “I love you.”

She hums, regaling her discomfort into its usual corner and kicking her feet up to swinging them back and forth playfully as the blanket falls around her butt. “I love you, too.” Lup props her chin up on one hand as he reaches for the book again. “Ya nerd.” 

He smiles and kisses her nose, and they lapse into a comfortable, well-practiced silence. 

The exposure leaves her drowsy and floaty-feeling, and she may or may not doze off on his chest. She comes back to a full awareness when Barry grumbles a curse and pushes her away. 

“Your back hurt?” She offers, taking the entire blanket as she stands and wrapping it around herself as if she were one of Taako’s culinary inventions.

“Yeah, it went stiff.” He sits, legs apart, and plants his hands on his knees for a long moment before standing. There’s a pop from his spine, and he sighs a long note of relief. “Ugh, it would have been great to get immortal in, uh, in my thirties.”

Lup scoffs. “Wow, greedy, Bear. Most people never get immortal at all. How’s about a little gratitude for your eternal circumstance?” 

He shrugs and smirks. “Well, uh, I saved the world.” He moves towards her at the same time as she steps over to him, tilting an eyebrow at his sarcasm. “So, I, um, I can be as greedy as I want, I think?” His arms wind around her waist, and she doesn't miss the glint of mischief in his eyes as he pulls her close. 

“Ohh, someone’s feeling confident, today!” she teases, draping her arms over his shoulders. “Careful, Barry, you’ve got those fancy sense magics, but I’ve got spell shaping and a scrappy nature.” 

He mirrors her, quirking a brow. “Oh yeah? You wanna turn the tables on me, babe?” He leans in, ghosting his lips over her cheek in a way that would be a kiss if he weren’t smiling so wide. 

It’s good this way, she thinks. Just the two of them, flirting and smiling and kissing; these things are nice. “Like a DJ, Barry.”

The almost-kiss turns into a gentle brush of love against her temple, but a little bit of the certainty fades as he pulls away. “I don’t know what that means.”

Lup giggles and winks. “Come upstairs and find out, then.” She kisses him, chaste but inviting and turns elegantly, buffeting him with her hair and the blanket before she traipses up the stairs.

She hears him laugh, an airy sound, and mutter an “alright, yeah, sure,” before falling into step behind her.

Their dynamic might not be  _ exactly  _ the same it was, Lup thinks, but things are fine.

Things are nice. 

Barry waves out the lights, leaving them in the soft, dwindling twilight. His hands wind around her and he smiles into their kiss.

Things are nice. 

Lup shivers when the room dims.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's up it's 10:00AM on a Sunday! Have an update!
> 
> (Thank you all for your patience! I hope you enjoy this chapter :) )
> 
> (Lup is socially transitioned in this one)

It took a few months of them sleeping in the same bed to re-establish their old routine.

Now, most days, they go to bed together. Lup settles into a sitting meditation with her back against the headboard while Barry lies next to her, one hand gently clasped in hers as he drifts to sleep.

Four hours later, she leaves quietly and spends some time reading, artificing, or enjoying the nature around their home. 

Then, Barry comes downstairs to a nice breakfast (with or without the addition of Taako) and starts his day in a similar manner.

Other days, Lup sleeps too. They fall asleep next to each other, and they both rise in the early hours, synchronous and tangled together. 

Those mornings are some of her favorites, especially when the moment that rouses her are his lips pressed into the back of her neck. 

“Mornin, Barry,” she murmurs, rolling onto her back and smiling as her hand finds the soft grasp of his in the early-dawn light. It bends her neck awkwardly; her hair is still piled into the bun she put it in during last night’s bath, but he takes advantage of the strange angle to kiss her into full wakefulness.

“Mornin’.” He parrots, and the slow, practiced way he moves over her makes her chest feel warm. His eyes flash to hers for a moment before he kisses down her neck and across her shoulder. She catches the tail end of a thought in his soft blue eyes. “I love you.”

She chuckles, running her thumb over his knuckles as she catches his other hand, too. “I love you too. But this? This is bad for my neck.” 

He hums, lips lingering above her shirt-covered breast. “Alright, how about—” he pulls their hands apart and withdraws, settling onto his haunches and running a hand through sleep-tousled hair. She’s momentarily struck by how handsome he is; soft angles and gentle strength highlighted by the soft light and the slow way he moves to rest a hand against her side. “How about you roll over?”

She feels a wry smile spread across her face. “Ooh, I like where this is going.”

Barry chuckles softly as she flops onto her stomach, and the sound fills her with an affectionate warmth. It’s followed by a tidal wave of downright devotion when his fingers dig into her shoulders.

“Oh, _ fuck yeah _ , Barry.”

He laughs in earnest then, hands finding the space under her shoulder blades with firm pressure that makes her whole body limp. 

She pushes out a breath when he finds a particularly tense area near her ribs. He makes a fist and digs into the spot with his knuckles, and Lup bites her tongue to keep from gasping out loud.

He attends to the same spot on the other side, working her into a relaxed puddle in comfortable silence. It must be ages, Lup thinks, before he works his way down to her hips (and she nearly dies when his hands dig into her glutes), but she can’t help the whine that escapes her when he gives her a final pat and rests his hands on her before drawing away.

He placates her immediately and she goes quiet, though, when he kisses the spots his hands worked loose. She hears a soft slide of blankets, and with a difficult crane of her neck, she sees him settle into a place between her thighs.

“Want me to roll over again?” she offers, letting herself relax. She knows he can hear the smile on her voice, and she can hear the same smirk in his tone when he quips back, “No, no, this is fine.” and tugs her panties down over the curve of her ass. 

He spreads her open in the same moment where he paints her rim with a long pass of his tongue.

“Oh,  _ fuck _ ,” she gasps, too loud and abrupt, and her legs immediately stiffen as she automatically presses her body against his face. “Yoooooou are wasting  _ no _ time this morning, huh?”

“Wanted to do this last night,” he murmurs, two fingers pressing into her perineum as he kisses the soft skin of her inner thighs. The pressure coils lust in her groin. “Felt too tired by the time you got outta the bath, though, uh—I didn’t want, didn’t want to rush it.”

She decides to muffle herself in the pillow instead of responding when he licks into her, long and languid, and she’s torn between rutting into the sheets and pressing back against the shallow penetration until he makes the decision for her.

Barry rises up onto his elbows and grabs her hips, holding her steady against him and spreading her open with his thumbs. He peppers kisses across her sensitive skin before he spins his tongue in tight circles that make her shiver. 

She moans, and heat pounds through her like honey from the sweet feeling of his fingers digging into her hips and dragging her against him. “Barry—” she gasps when he curls a lick across her that sends lightning through her core. “That feels  _ really _ nice.”

“Good,” he whispers, and it’s gruff and low and she shudders at the feeling of faint stubble scratching her thighs as he mouths across her.

It’s slow and patient, and the abrupt, burning lust diffuses into a full-body warm that leaves her aroused and pliant under his mouth. 

Lup whimpers when he pulls away, replacing his tongue with the teasing pad of a finger, dipping only shallowly into her as me murmurs. “Hey, Lup?”

“Yeah?” She sighs, rocking back and feeling herself flutter around him. 

“Can I, uh—May I cast on you?”

She almost pants out a ‘yes, yeah, totally,’ without thinking, only hungry for the feeling of his hot, wet tongue against the entrance to her body, but a flash of nervousness grounds her. 

She sees her hands knotted in the sheets by her head, sees the room illuminated in pale lavender light—

She feels the silky sheets under her chest and stomach, feels the cool morning air and the warm blankets coiled around her body, Lup hears some birds cooing outside, and Lup hears Barry’s slow, diligent breathing.  

Fuck it, she’s got nothing to be afraid of.

“Yes, yeah, totally” she answers, feeling the thrum of her nerves under the throb of lust, and his breathing catches in a way that she would miss if she weren’t paying such close attention. 

“Okay.”

Barry whispers the spell this time, and her view of the mattress and her hands knotted in the sheets fades to unrecognizable darkness. 

“Tell me if you want me to drop it.” He says, clear and direct. 

“Yes,  _ yes _ ,” Lup says, the first as a response to him and the second at his tongue delving into her again. His hands spread her, and the feeling of being pulled open, laid bare under his attention, makes her tremble. Her senses buzz in the darkness: the wet slide of his tongue is electrifying, and the hiss of the blankets as she ruts against his face makes her bite her lip. 

The darkness behind her eyes is oppressive, and she feels a buzz of anxiety. The discomfort lingers nearby, but the sheer amount of _ sensation _ overrides her nervousness and twists it into a low, hot, feeling that hardens her clit and makes her thighs shake. 

She’s closer than she’d care to admit when he pulls away with a sigh, and the thought of his flushed cheeks and spit-slicked lips nearly makes Lup ask him to drop the spell.

The heat of anticipation is very different than the cold of apprehension, though, and the unintelligible murmur of another spell holds her attention for only another moment before he’s pressing a finger into her, easy and purposeful. 

Lup closes her mouth against the moan that tries to spill from her throat, and she turns her head, ears quirking in his direction. 

“You’re so pretty,” he whispers, revenant. “Do you like that, Lup?”

It’s an unfair question for him to ask the second he crooks his finger against her prostate, but she doesn’t rise to his bait, instead remaining flat on her stomach and angling her hips against him. She moans as he slides a second finger into her.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s good, Bear.”

“Tell me how you feel.” His voice is closer now, and she feels the mattress dip as he shifts. He pushes a little harder against her walls, spreading his fingers for just a moment before re-angling them against her sweet spot.

There’s a hardness against her ass, suddenly, and she feels her desire tighten as his hand leaves her.

The tip of his cock nudges her entrance. “I feel good.” The edge of anxiety is far-off, and his controlled breathing is close. “I feel really good.”

And it’s true, his body is warm behind her, she can smell their sheets and the heavy scent of sex, and the feeling of a smiling kiss pressed to her shoulder is familiar and light as he murmurs: “Good.”

Barry presses into her, a long, hard thrust that pushes her against the mattress, and she gasps at the way her clit pushes against the sheets and his cock drives into her. 

“Oh,  _ fuck _ ,” she gasps, hands scrambling forward against the sheets, finding the headboard in the dark and grabbing at its intricate carving as he pushes into her again, slowly.

“Perfect.” He whispers, and he’s so  _ close _ — she’s caught between him and the bed, his soft body presses into her at every point. She can feel his words riding a hot breath of air directly next to her ear. She flicks her eyes to where he leans over her, but she registers only the impression of movement as one of his arms winds around her chest to pull her closer. 

“I feel  _ really _ good, Bear.”

“Good.” Barry whispers. He thrusts slowly, lazily, and sucks hard on the long plane of her ear before speaking again: “Love making you feel good, Lup.”

He shifts them again, then, using the arm around her chest to pull her up. Her back is still against him, but she lets him pull her onto her knees.

It’s a choice she immediately dubs ‘the right one’ when his other hand starts touching her, his warm palm wrapping around her clit and rubbing her slowly with each long thrust.

“You look so good, too.” He whispers, quickening his pace a little in a way that rocks her body against him. “So relaxed, Lup.” A little harder, a bit more of a jolt, “Your eyes are open, do you know?”

She didn't, but she blinks sightlessly and gapes, reveling in the hot stirring of his words and the warmth of his breath against her ear.

“Your mouth, too,” the hand on her chest comes up, and she feels his thumb press against her lips. She breathes heavy around it as he lifts her chin, giving himself access to her neck. “Looks so good, Lup. How do you feel?”

It’s a disarming question, and she resents the thinking-power it takes to hear him and respond, especially as he kisses along her throat. She feels good, mostly, full and pliant, and each slow thrust coils the hot arousal sitting deep in her gut.  

“Good,” she breathes, and the way his fingers splay across her neck is divine.

She can hardly move except to roll her body against him, caught between the twin sensations of his cock buried inside of her and his hand wrapped tightly around her clit, jerking her off with the dextrous twist of someone who knows exactly how to drive her insane. 

It  _ is _ maddening, slow and deliberate and not enough to make her come until she brings her hands up, one covering his at her neck and the other moving to card through his hair. Her nails drag over his scalp, and he breathes a long sigh against her skin as he ruts against her more erratically. 

Then, Barry squeezes just a little harder with his other hand, driving into her, and she finds her edge. Light erupts behind her sightless eyes as he groans and sinks his teeth into her neck to muffle himself. 

The choked moan she makes rumbles against the hand at her throat, and she seizes, shivering as he holds her through their orgasms.

He pulls out of her and drops his hand back to her chest with two murmurs: “Unblind” and “prestidigitate.”

And Lup collapses onto the mattress, closing her eyes against the suddenly too-bright dawn light and pulling him down with her inelegant “fwump” onto the sheets. They gather each other into their arms, a tangle of limbs and softly murmured platitudes. 

“So much for ‘lazy morning sex.’” She quips after a moment, opening her eyes to catch him watching her closely.

“So much for lazy morning sex,” he agrees, nodding solemnly. 

His face is pensive, and Lup feels a flash of… something pierce through the warm glow. 

“What’s wrong?” She asks, smoothing her hand over the lines of his forehead. 

He has a moment of consideration, opening his mouth and closing it before pensive turns to serious and he asks her: “How, uh, how did you feel about the darkness?”

Lup stiffens, then forces herself to slump against him once more. Curiosity thinly veils his concern. “And here I was thinking that you were just having a horny morning.”

Barry moves onto his stomach and shrugs with an abashed look. “Well, I, uh.” He pauses and smiles at her. It’s a charming grin, and she knows it’s meant to appease her. There’s still a shadow of concern between his brows. “I can—I can be horny to help my wife, uh, overcome her fear.”

She slaps his arm and rolls away. “Oh my god, you’re so tacky.” A pause. “And I’m not afraid of the dark.”

That gives him pause, and there's a moment of quiet before he goes “Lup—”

“Don’t ‘Lup’ me,” she says, flipping to face him again, and she’s smiling even as the flash of 'something' sharpens into annoyance. “Come on, remember the couch? The couch was great.”

Barry looks notably unimpressed.

“Alright, I get what you’re trying to do here, and I appreciate the sentiment. What I don’t appreciate is you  _ scheming _ to get me all soft, pliant, and ready to talk about this problem you think I have. Like I said, the umbrella thing is in the past, so we can  _ really _ just move on.”

They’re touching in sprawl of limbs, so it’s easy to feel the way his shoulders tighten. 

“That’s not what I—” Barry cuts himself off, takes a moment to quiet the flush brewing under his cheeks, and tries again, calmer. “Lup. It’s been a century. You trust me to know when something’s wrong.” It isn’t a question, and Barry brings one hand up to cup her cheek. “Maybe—Maybe ‘afraid’ isn’t the right word. We can call it whatever you want, but….” Barry sighs. “We have to call it something, so we can fix it.”

Lup sighs. “Can we just call it the past?”

She extricates her limbs from his and flops onto her back. “I understand that you’re worried. We don’t have the best track record with, uh, talking about our problems, if we’re being honest.”

Barry makes a noise of uncomfortable acknowledgement. 

“But it’s different now. We’re here, together, and we can focus on moving on.”

He pulls her back to him, then, and she would swear that warm energy sparks across his skin for just a moment before she wraps her arms around his shoulders. 

Eventually, he speaks. “Alright, well, I guess… we can, uh, we can take your approach.” 

“Hmm?” 

“We can move on.” Barry runs his hands over her back, nudging them under her rumpled shirt. He doesn't look her in the eyes. “I don’t have any reason to stop believing in you, Lup. ” It’s quiet, resigned. “I guess we can just… wait.”

Barry smiles at her, and it’s a little contemplative and a little sad. 

There’s a familiar tension between them that Lup brushes to the side. They did a century of waiting, she should have no trouble with it by now. 

They go about their day, and Barry doesn’t bring it up again.

Eventually, the day ends, and Lup settles into bed, lying against silky sheets.

Most days, they rest together, hands clasped or legs intertwined, but some days, Lup falls asleep alone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy November! Have an update :D
> 
> Many thanks to Dasy for the beta!

Alone, alone, alone and they can’t  _ hear _ her; she has no form, no strength, nothing.

_Taako, Barry, Merle, Magnus,_ ** _run_** **,** she shouts _,_ but her voice is formless and silent. There’s no sound, hearing is too difficult, and shadows and static encrust her vision as she pushes her senses towards her brother. 

_ Anyone, anything, see me, feel me,  _ **_run._ **

The gauntlet comes down on his head, she can feel the fire biting at their heels _ ,  _ and she lurches upwards with a gasp—

—she’s in the dark she’s alone where’s the light where’s the light—

—produce flame she knows the cantrip produce flame—

Her lips are forming around the word when there’s a hand on her shoulder, and the sudden kinesthetic sensation makes her jump again—

—overload, overload, how can she  _ feel _ if she’s in that damn staff—

Fire erupts from her fingertips, burning too-big and too-bright. 

No curtains, no black? She snaps her eyes around the room. The red light illuminates her legs, tangled in sweat-damp sheets and the four corners of their bed. A mirror on a nearby wall reflects the light, and she can make out the shape of their dressers and bookshelves.

Barry’s hand rests on her shoulder and her heartbeat thunders in her ears. Each breath is quick and strained, and she registers Barry, infuriatingly: “Breathe, Lup, come on, calm down. You’re in our room, you’re—you’re safe here.” 

“Shut up, Barry.” She pants, thready and weak. 

His hand leaves her shoulder for just a moment before she hears him sigh and replace it, rubbing his thumb in a small circle over her collarbone. It doesn’t burn her the second time.

“Sorry.” Is the only other thing he offers, leaving her to gather her breathing in silence. 

It takes an eon that might just be a minute, but Lup eventually turns to him. The flame in her fingers calms, and she shapes it into a small floating ball.

He’s glasses-less and bedraggled, the corners of his mouth pulled down in a frown. His soft concern is more grounding than any breathing exercise, and the tension hanging taught in her muscles settles before she collapses against him, boneless and exhausted. He catches her like he always does.

She fits into him, and Lup buries her face in his rumpled sleep shirt. His body is soft where she winds her arms around his middle, and  it’s a comfortable meshing of bodies. She breathes deeply the scent of home that clings to him. 

Eventually, she mumbles “You don’t need to be sorry” as his arms wrap around her.

She pretends not to notice the way he squeezes her, slight and desperate, as the hovering flame winks out. 

Lup tries to keep the tension out of her shoulders. She realises her breath is coming in quick, sharp breaths again at the same time as Barry nudges her to “breathe, come on, Lup.” 

She takes one deep breath, fisting her hand against the stretched-out collar of his shirt, but there’s a knot in her heart that keeps the breath trapped in her throat.

She looks up at him, shaken, and she sees something under his concern, something cold. “I—” she tries, unnerved by the tight line of his pursed lips. “I should be saying sorry. So, I’m sorry, for, uh, for  _ that _ .” Lup pulls away a little bit and waves her hand. “I didn’t mean to wake you up. Let’s go back to sleep and, uh, and we’ll just forget about this, okay?” 

He’s worried, she can see it, but the pursed lips simmer into something else, something  _ angrier _ . “You…” Barry takes a deep breath. “No, I—This is ridiculous, Lup. This is—I’m not doing this anymore. ” He punctuates the statement by sitting up and snapping his fingers. The lights flare to life, and he looks down at her. “Lup, this is a  _ problem _ , a real problem, and we need to talk about it like the god-damn adults we are.”

The weight in her chest drops to her stomach, and she sits up slowly. 

"For these last few weeks I—I’m  _ trying, _ Lup.

“I’m trying to leave this behind us and give you the space you want." His tone is terse, and the placating gesture he tries to make falls more into 'patronizing' territory. "But this is fucking ridiculous. I'm just—I'm just trying to help. I want this to be better; I'm not ignoring this anymore.  _ We're _ not ignoring this. Not again." Barry takes a breath, and she can see the restraint in his pointed gaze. “I didn’t want to talk about it like this, but I’m… I’m tired of getting brushed off when I can see you suffer, Lup.”

Angry Barry has been rare since their early days on the ship, but his pointed annoyance is nothing new. “Listen,” she huffs, breathing in every ounce of composure she can muster. Her body thrums with adrenaline again, initiated by the dream but drawn-out by the aggression simmering under Barry’s composure. “I just need time. It was a rough spot, is all, but I only ever need time.” She offers a guarded smile and takes his hands to keep hers from trembling. 

Her heart twists when she feels him shaking too. “I mean,” she continues, “all we’ve ever needed is time.”

Barry picks up the pla cation and belts her across the face with it. “Like the time we needed after the gauntlet destroyed Cordelia? After it killed thousands of people, and we just  _ sat  _ there and said ‘it’s the best we could do,’” his voice is choked off, damp and desperate. “That was  _ wrong, _ that was a mistake.” Barry squeezes her hands, even as she tries to draw away. It’s too much, suddenly. He rends the old wounds: “I saw how upset you were, and I ignored it because I thought we just needed  _ time _ . ” 

She pulls her hands away, gathering herself on the edge of the bed and fighting back the nausea coiling in her gut as he continues. “I’m not—I’m not ignoring this again. I’m  _ never _ ignoring these feelings again. I tried. I tried because it’s what you said you needed, but, you know what? It’s not what you need, and it’s  _ not okay _ for me to ignore this with you.”

Lup wishes he would, wishes for the uncomfortable but consistent ignorance of a decade earlier, wishes for the repetitive, cyclic rotations of the last century.

At least when they went in circles, she knew what came next.

She wraps her arms around herself. 

“Lup,  _ please _ .”

His voice is weak and desperate, and this time, his concern pulls her threads loose.

Lup feels many things at once, a flare of desperation followed by a tidal wave of misery, and she collapses against him, a sob tearing from her chest, and  _ damn him _ for knowing how to take her apart,  _ damn him _ for seeing the weak point and needling it until the the haphazard stitches holding her together tear and a decade of pent-up frustration surges out. 

“ _ Fuck,”  _ she breathes, ragged. “Fuck, this  _ sucks.” _

Barry holds her, and he’s trembling. He doesn’t rub her back, doesn't whisper niceties into her hair; his hands are flat over her shoulders, and his skin feels warm with loosely-contained magic. 

“It sucks pretty bad.” He responds, pulling her as close as he can. “But we can’t—we can’t just wait for the problem to fix itself.”

Lup scoffs and looks up at him. She must be a mess, wet-eyed and red-faced. “We ...  we already tried that, huh?”

“Twice.” He states, dry. “It’s not working the second time, either.”

His face is stony, and Lup has some trouble parsing his expression. It’s harder now than it was, regretfully, to know what exactly Barry’s thinking. There’s anger, regret, and underneath that, clearing as she watches the slant of his lips, the divot between his eyebrows, fear. 

She sighs. “I’m sorry.” 

There’s a long pause. “‘You don’t need to be sorry.’” He parrots, and his hand starts moving slowly over her back. His skin cools. “I just want us to… do something.” His face softens. “That’s —that’s why I was, uh, ‘scheming,’ a few weeks ago, I, um, wanted to try addressing the thing, but I—” He brings a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I felt so  _ stuck _ .”

She nods and sits up slowly. 

“I…I feel stuck, too.”

The present tense seems to soften him, and he huffs a laugh. “We—We’re stuck.” Barry runs a hand through his messy hair, shaking his head as he looks at her. “ _ Shit _ , Lup, we—we gotta stop making the same mistakes.”

She almost smiles. He’s right, he’s right and their entire approach has been ass-backwards and confounded with pretense. “We got a little too used to going in circles, huh?”

Barry nods. “We gotta try something different.”

There’s a very long pause, and Lup sniffles up the last of her sorrow. It’s almost like a switch flips. She looks up at Barry. “Cast on me, right now.”

Barry’s eyes widen, and he responds with his usual brand of eloquence: “Uh.”

“‘Cus you know what? If this isn’t something that I can just leave behind, then it’s something I need to confront on  _ my _ terms.” Fight or flight, she thinks, and with the latter failing to salve the wounds of sitting in a dark room for a decade, she deserves a chance to fight. Lup sits up and crosses her legs in her meditative pose. “Cast blindness and deafness. I wanna punch the darkness in it’s stupid face.” There’s a beat of silence. “Metaphorically.”

Barry looks to the side, sighs. Looks back to her, opens his mouth, closes it once, and then decides on the words. “Alright, I—” He pauses. “Huh. It’s been, uh, a crazy couple’a minutes, are you sure you want that?”

Lup nods. “Yes. You wanted me to own the problem, so here I am. The darkness sucks, I’m ready, Bear. I’m tired and pissed and really finished with being upset by all of this.  _ Those _ are my terms of confrontation.” She feels herself simmering, but there’s a gravity in her words that solidifies her anxiety into a battering ram of determination. “We tried the cozy couch immersion, and that was fine, but this? This late-night panic? This is what needs to stop. Cast.”

Barry sighs and takes her hand. “I—I trust you.” 

The spell brushes from his lips to her ears, and then there’s nothing but the feeling of his thumb rubbing across her palm.

_ This is my space _ , she tells herself, sitting in the quiet darkness.  _ This is my space _ . 

Lup breathes for several minutes, falling back on skills of patience honed through years of practice. 

The magic limits her perception, but it’s okay.

_ No more _ , she decides,  _ no more _ .

She feels the mattress move under her; her body tilts slightly forward in space.

There’s the faintest brush of lips against hers; a ghosting of pressure. He doesn’t give her the time to kiss him back, instead drawing away. Barry pulls his hand from her and gives her space, and the instant his presence is gone, she feels her anxiety tighten again.

It's still okay, she tells herself. Barry is undoubtedly watching her face from two feet away, his hand raised in the gesture to banish the spells.

Even if he weren’t, this is her domain. She spent a decade of her undeath in this space, and even if that reminder fills her with discomfort, she would never need to go through that again.

In the dark, she remembers the umbrella getting destroyed. In the dark, she thinks about her new corporeal form and the protections it affords. Her ordeal is over, and now she can sit and exist in the space of their home with or without her senses.

She thinks of things, completed trials and tribulations, and then her thoughts wander.

She watches them go, attentive to where her brain takes her in the post-adrenaline calm. 

Eventually, Lup wanders to memories, first before Taako broke her free, channeling her soul through the umbrella for a fireball she could be proud of. Further back into the darkness: flashes of her husband, alive in his undeath after her creation destroyed him.

Before that, there was the little mouse (Templeton Jr.) that nibbled on the umbrella once in a blue moon. She spent months trying to psychically get him to eat through the fabric, but she was just too damn good at artificing, and the umbrella stayed whole. 

Before that, a sense of warmth and eagerness as hands traced the plane of her belly, pressing into her skin while 5 o'clock shadow scraped across her thighs. 

She pauses at that thought. That’s what the loss of senses  _ used  _ to mean. Instead of discomfort there was anticipation, and instead of agony there was affection. 

It was a damn better situation than her current set-up.

Kiss me, she says, a sudden vigor infusing her words. She feels her shoulders slant back and her ears tilt down. That last thought, that last memory, that's what she wants, and she’ll fight for it if she needs to. 

He kisses her, and she knows the texture of his love well enough to feel the hesitation in the brush of his lips. 

She brings her hands to his cheeks, drawing him in, and he pauses. 

The spell drops, and she hears she slide of the blankets as she pulls him onto her.

“If that’s what you want,” he says, and she sees him watching her intently. “That’s what we can do, but not tonight.”

Lup frowns. “No?”

Barry slides off of her, settling into his usual side-lying position. “One step at a time.” He says. “You’re tired, I’m tired, and the last thing either of us need is a drop.”

She heaves a large sigh. “Yeah, I guess—that's the pragmatic decision, yeah.”

“I’m proud of you,” he says suddenly, looking up at her from the mattress. The seriousness in his tone is undercut by the half-focus in his eyes, and Lup eases herself down next to him. “and... thank you.” Barry raises a hand to her shoulder to pull her a little closer, and she cuddles close. “I, uh, I think we’re gonna work this out.”

“We will,” she answers. It’s nerve wracking, and the pit in her stomach begs her to back out of this whole thing and just pretend the conversation never happened when they wake up in the morning. 

So Lup smiles past the discomfort. She pushes a little further, commits a little harder: “I’m gonna fight the dark, and I’m gonna  _ win. _ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go!! My personal goal for NaNoWriMo is to update once a week. I'm really grateful to you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you'll swing around for next week's resolution.
> 
> <3


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